this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.

If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.

Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!

Rules

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0. Only post socialist memes


That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)


1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here


Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.


2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such


That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.


3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.


That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).


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The only dangerous minority is the rich.


5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.

(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)


6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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Oh hey, also the same thing with environmental issues

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (28 children)

Edit 3: one last edit that I'm putting at the top because I'm not sure if people are only reading part of what I've written, jumping to conclusions and then putting words into my mouth; or if I've just been very bad at conveying what I'm trying to say.

Firstly: I'm arguing from an American perspective, something I failed to specify.

Secondly: money is great, however, many people need more than money. By all means, give them money, but make sure they have other resources in case they need it. If nothing else, there are a lot of people in homelessness or poverty with serious mental health needs. Money isn't going to help if they can't afford healthcare.

Thirdly: I also failed to give examples of what I meant by, do something else too. I meant, cap rent, build public housing, ensure that people have access to food even when CEOs are renting out pineapples, etc.

Finally: the US runs on greed. Prices in the US are outstripping wages dramatically because CEOs realized they could charge more. I think the reason why giving money works in studies is because CEOs don't know who's getting the handouts; if they did, they'd absolutely try to fleece them for the assistance money. That's why doing it universally, so that CEOs know that a lot of people are getting additional money, without any other form of assistance, will just lead to people being priced out of life again.

Not sure how much I'll contribute or respond after this. I'm feeling kinda discouraged due to how many people are putting words in my mouth (it may be a misunderstanding, but it's still demoralizing).


Oh my god, I'm using fish as a metaphor for money, and teaching someone to fish as a metaphor for ensuring their ability to provide for themselves. That's what the metaphor is about. Ensuring people's ability to provide for themselves. Is that really what y'all are confused about? If you see me referring to "fish" then I'm talking about money, not food.


I'm not convinced that just cash will solve homelessness or poverty. It may help, but it seems like a "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime" kinda situation. Give people the fish so they can eat, but if you want them to actually be independent, then you gotta make sure they have the tools they need to do so.

And you know what, maybe they just are that way, maybe they're just cursed to always be a dependent on someone. However, if that's the case then they're going to need way more help than just fish. In the meantime though, maybe treat them like human beings that are down on their luck but otherwise capable of supporting themselves. Yeah, make sure they have food, a roof over their head, water, toilets and so on, but don't stop there. That's why I'm saying this, there may be people who see your post and think that just throwing money at the problem will make it go away. It'll help, but it's not gonna fix it 100%.

Edit: I'm not sure why it's controversial to say that people need more help than just money. Personally? If I was homeless or in poverty, I'd want more than just money. Like, I'm not saying to not give people who are homeless or in poverty money, but what I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't stop there.

Edit 2: I don't understand why people are so confused here. I'm not saying it won't work for some people, but there are people that it won't work for. To repeat something I said further along, in my experience, there are people who take these things literally. In my experience, there are people who would look at this meme, say, "sounds good, let's do that" and then get mad when it doesn't work for everyone.

I'm not saying that money won't help a lot of people; it would. It's just that there are people who will take this literally and believe it's the only thing you have to do.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not convinced that just cash will solve homelessness or poverty. It may help, but it seems like a "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime" kinda situation. Give people the fish so they can eat, but if you want them to actually be independent, then you gotta make sure they have the tools they need to do so.

I think the reason you've taken so much flak is that money isn't fish. Money can be converted into tools. Yes, of course you're right that some people won't use the money in a way which will end their homelessness, and may benefit from 'other programs'. But the meme was specifically about people objecting to the idea of giving poor people money so that they can solve their own problems. Rolling out 'other programs' is great, but the 'other programs' will be much more effective if they're not clogged with people that can solve their own problems with a bit of cash.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Right... But they gotta be able to afford to continually afford those tools. Rich people try to suck at much money out of people as possible. The moment they hear that poor people are receiving money is the moment they smell blood in the water. They'll just hike up prices in response. That's why I'm not convinced that throwing money at poor people will work.

It's not their fault.

They didn't do anything wrong.

It's the rich people who are the problem.

Get rid of the rich people or their ability to price people out of life and boom! Now the money you give poor people will remain effective. Otherwise they might be able to buy tools today, but the money might not be enough to buy tools again tomorrow.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We can choose to either provide for those who lack food, housing, and other things, or we can choose not to. We often choose not to despite having both sufficient food and shelter.

We can also choose to pursue the goal of making the poor independent.

But if we choose to leave people unprovided for, that is just what we have chosen. There is no way around that.

Making the poor independent is a separate project, in the same vein as making people stop being violent, or unhealthy, or depressed, or sick. An eternal pursuit , with a curious caveat. Because in the case of the poor, if the population of dependent poor die off while the newly improved Independent population remains, it would be a success. No more dependants is the goal, quite literally. It is treated more like ridding ourselves of leeches.

Because contribution is demanded, no matter how banale, cynical, useless, performative or downright harmful. Marketing, manipulation, waste and serving up garbage is all much better than the insufficiently productive poor. Learn to weld, only to make giant steel flower beds to decorate an apartment building, supply the ridiculous demand. Supplying something is the point, regardless of how necessary the demand is.

There's also the matter that we've chosen very explicitly to disallow the poor any power to simply leave the city and establish their of towns of rejects with the materials that exist in nature, as harvesting huge quantities of wood and clay without permissions – unlikely to be obtained – is expressly illegal. Apparently we have to, to protect the environment from people. But it's not civilization's responsibility to rectify that injustice, is it? It can just disallow you your shelter and leave it at that. Civilization does not have to compensate a man for the option it has taken away from him.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

People just need enough to buy a rod

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Financial education, it's practically intentional that we don't learn proper finance management and if you're family didn't manage money well (poor or rich) you'll struggle to use any money you get effectively when your out on your own

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